2009 Abyss: Zupan's on Burnside

Beer Luvvas,

Just a quick note that I finally got around to picking up this year's Deschutes Abyss this weekend. I called ahead to Zupan's on Burnside since last year I had to go all the way to Zupan's on Belmont, where I had to enlist a partner to pick up a case (6 bottle/person limit).

I had already planned to bring Freebird along (and she planned to bring me along on the 'rest of the day's errands'), but when I called Zupan's they said....

"No limit. Come buy us out. We got plenty this year."

Wow! I didn't check prices around town. Zupan's was selling for $11/22oz bottle. Needless to say, I have my case and picked up a couple for Gooney since he asked....

Prost to 2009 Deschutes Abyss!

Bethany's Table Ninkasi Brewer's Dinner Notes

Beer Luvvas,

Life has gotten out of control, so I have no time to translate my notes from Saturday Night's Ninkasi Brewer's Dinner at Bethany's Table. So pardon the lack of any grammar from my notes below...

Ninkasi autumn wheat 6.9 percent. Dark wheat noble hops 50 ibus. Mixed greens pears radishes spice walnuts cinnamon and cayenne.

Head brewer: Jamie. Former steelhead brewer first gold hopasaurus rex. Has a tattoo of catholic symbol but with hops. President of oregon brewers guild.

Tricerahops with sweet potato cocoa chili new Mexico chimayo red chills. Double ipa. 8.8 100 ibus. Balanced. Hops will pull oils off your tongue. Good pairing with spicy food. The soup makes the beer better and the beer makes the soup better.

Ninkasi Sumerian goddess of fermentation. Law for execution for charging too much for beer. Hops from Willamette and Yakima valley. Malt from Vancouver. Water from McKenzie river.

Believer with pork belly locally raised brine for 3 days and cooked overnight in chicken stock and Italian corona bean. Those are big ass beans. I actually think the Believer overpowers the pork belly a bit and did all 4 of my dinner partners. First winter seasonal NW strong style. Inspired by 1990 jubilale - take it seriously. Made year round red ale or amber is 30 styles 6.9 60 ibus very dark w/chocolate and caramel.

Sleigh'r 09 with rib eye bacon molasses butter and roasted root vegetables. The sweetness of the bacon molasses butter and the sweetness of the sleigh'r is an unbelievable combination of goodness. Winter seasonal brewed as German alt w/ale yeast but fermented @ lower temps. 58 degrees. 50 ibus dark malt but 7 percent alcohol. Released as bottles on 11/12 thru 1/1/10.

Soft opening of Eugene tasting room. Opens on Monday.

Oatis ice cream! Seriously oatis stout used ti make the ice cream! Chocolate fudge brownie with a cherry sauce. Too good. Too too good. Wow! There is heat in the chocolate!

Prost to Ninkasi and Bethany's Table!

Bethany's Table Ninkasi Brewer's Dinner Tomorrow 11/7

Beer Luvvas,

I just got word that there's still seats available for Bethany's Table Ninkasi Brewer's Dinner tomorrow night.

Cozy place off of Bethany & Laidlaw (Cornell exit off of US26). Come on by and enjoy some great pairings with great Ninkasi Brews!

Prost to Bethany's Table!

T Minus One Month and Five Days til Holiday Ale Fest

Beer Luvvas,

I was talking calendar with SQHub and discovered that we are almost one month away from THE GREATEST BEER FESTIVAL IN THE WORLD: The Portland Holiday Ale Festival!

So, I went to the site and looked at the tap list for the 2009 rendition and was too excited not to pass along a short list of holiday-goodness:

• Alameda Oak Aged Papa Noel Moonlit Reserve
• Bridgeport Bourbon-Ezer
• Deschutes Lost Barrels of Mirror Mirror
• Full Sail Dry-Hopped Wassail
• Laughing Dog Chocolate Huckleberry Stout
• Ninkasi Herb'd Imperial Stout
• Pelican Bad Santa
• Stone Bourbon Barrel Aged Arrogant Bastard

and for Freebird......Three Creeks Rudolph's Imperial.....Red!

Prost to the Holiday Ale Fest! T-Minus One Month and Counting!

An IPA not in the 64 Blind Bracket...

Beer Luvvas,

Unfortunately, Gooney sent me a MS 2007 version of the IPA bracket so I'm unable to download it on my home (aka old) system. So you'll have to wait a couple more posts for the results....

However, I have had a chance to sample a couple brews from my last Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club: Tallgrass IPA and Buzzard's Bay Black Lager.

Tallgrass, from Kansas, I feel would have held up just fine against the IPAs more readily available in Gooney's neck of the Portland woods. With more than a dash of Cascade, Willamette, Amarillo, Nugget and Northern Brewer hops; Tallgrass definitely had enough hop notes (60 IBUs) to keep up with some of the Northwest's finest.

Buzzard's Bay Black Lager is another interesting beer. The lager brewing method gives it a very crisp finish to go with it's malty (2-Row Pale, Carafa, Vienna and Munich) up-front flavors. I do find it interesting that the Midwest seems to be experimenting with quite a few non-standard lagers ..... I saw that Session Black won a GABF Gold this year.... Any other great lagers out there to be had?

I'm saving my last few beers to draw out the tastings since I now have a kegerator in the house, and won't be receiving any more shipments. Speaking of, there are a few new special codes for the upcoming holiday season...

Click on the add in the upper right and use the codes below to save a little Holiday Green:

Current Ongoing Coupon Codes
GMC$10 - Good for $10 off any prepaid 12 month order
GMC5 - Good for $5 off any prepaid order of 6 months or longer
GMCWW5 -Good for $5 off any prepaid Whatever-Whenever order

Speaking of the Holiday Season, and Full Sail, Freebird and I had our first Wassail of the winter season yesterday.....mmm, mmm, good. I love this time of year!

Prost to Beer of the Month Club & Holiday Ales!

64 IPA Challenge: Day 1: 64 to 32

Beer Luvvas,

Last Saturday, Gooney hosted the first day of his EPIC 64 IPA Blind Taste Bracket where a group of 30 beer 'connoisseurs' narrowed the field from 64 to 32 for the follow up event this Saturday.

I can't tell you anything about any of the beers that we've tasted to date, because none of the names were revealed last Saturday, but I can let you know how Gooney set up the event.

As all previous events, the beers were seeded heads-up (#1 v. #64 and #2 v. #63, etc.) based on rankings compiled from BeerAdvocate and RateBeer.com. One item of note is that there were many beers that were seeded higher in Gooney's original 32 beer IPA event a year ago then they are now, and a few that were previously seeded and are no longer either available, or ranked in the top #64 IPAs. Which means, as you probably have noticed, that there are a lot of good IPAs available these days.

Gooney divided the tasters into groups of pairs and threesomes which were then teamed up in different rounds to taste the different beers. Each participant tasted half of the 64 beers in the event, but the groups were changed up every round so (like happened to me last time) any one person wasn't always out-voted by the same D-bags every round. A nice improvement I must say!

Another change was that Gooney used an NFL Preseason Theme to name the beers and paired Raiders #1 v. Raiders #2 or Saints #1 v. Saints #2 in each head to head match up, and he informed us that 50% of the #1 beers were the higher seed, and 50% were the lower seed to remove as much "positional bias" as possible in the blind tastings.

The only bummer is that slightly into round 3, it became quite clear that I was coming down with a monster head cold which kept me in bed all day Saturday so my lack of flavor discerning had more to do with my histamine production than the products I was tasting.

I've successfully recovered, and I'm looking forward to the second phase where we'll go from 32 beers down to one this Saturday....stay tuned for the results!

Prost to Gooney for his 64 IPA Blind Taste Challenge!

Mens Journal Top 25 American Beers

Beer Luvvas,

I've been so swamped with non-beer related things this fall, I'm way behind passing along what some have considered one of my best columns this year:

Mens Journal Top 25 American Beers! This year they went American only v. previous years of Beers of the World, which is fitting given my focus on American Microbrews in my Beer of the Month Club.

Best Dark Beer
1. Ommegang Three Philosophers
2. Pennichuck Feuer-Wehrmann Schwarzbier
3. Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout

I'm a little disappointed that neither Deschutes The Abyss, nor Lost Coast Old Rasputin is on this list; but I'm not familiar with any of their top three. I must admit that Three Philosophers has scared me off given it's "blend of two classic Belgian styles" and my taste buds' revolt to almost all Belgian styles...

Best Ale
1. Stone Levitation Ale
2. Lagunitas IPA
3. Odell 90 Shilling Scottish Ale

I love all three, and there are many, many, many more ales that could be added to this list. But those who frequent this blog occasionally are not surprised.

Best Belgian Style
1. Flying Fish Exit 4
2. Southhampton Grand Crue
3. Bruery Orchard White

I'll trust these guys on this category....

Best Cutting Edge
1. Allagash Confluence
2. Deschutes Dissident
3. Dogfish Head Squall IPA

I have a couple Dissidents aging next to Abyss, Mirror Mirror and Black Butte XXI (I'm a Deschutes fan), but I haven't sampled the others...comments from Readers??

Best Lager
1. Left Hand Polestar
2. Victory Prima Pils
3. Full Sail Session Black

Yet another category where I haven't tried a single offering. My list of brews to quaff continues to expand!

Best Beer Cities (and Best Brews)
1. San Diego - Alpine Ale & Lost Abbey Duck-Duck-Gooze
Stone? Pizza-Port? Karl Strauss? AleSmith? hmmm....
2. New York City - Captain's Reserve Imperial IPA & Brooklyn Intensified Coffee Stout
Not up on NYC brews, not at all....
3. Portland (really?) - Hopworks Urban Crosstown Pale & Deschutes Hop Trip
Out of all our beers, is a Pale really one of our best??? I have problems with that....
4. Philadelphia - Stoudt's Pils & Victory Storm King Stout
Victory Hop Devil!!!!
5. Chicago - Goose Island Matilda & Two Brothers Cane and Abel Red Rye
I've had some Goose Island which has been good, but Matilda doesn't come to mind....

Well, I hope y'all have some interesting comments to post about these brews...til next time:

Prost to Mens Journal's Top 25 American Beers!

Pilsner Room Hopfest 2009!

Beer Luvvas,

Did you miss the 2009 Hopfest in either Hood River or PDX over the last 2 weeks? If so, fret not! The Pilsner Room has 7 Fresh Hopped Ales on Tap, and you can get a Sampler for $10!

My ratings and tasting notes:
#7 Double Mountain Killer Green - I was disappointed in the "green" flavor. Tasted waaaay to new, like it should have spent another couple months in a keg, or a barrel, to age. Maybe I'm just not a fan of the Perle Hops they used in the fresh-hop.

#6 Alameda Failing Street - Another "green" tasting brew. This time, Carson Hops.

#5 Full Sail Lupulin Ale - Crystal Hops - This was one of two versions of the Lupulin Ale that the Pilsner Room has on tap. I found the two versions very difficult to distinguish, but the Crystal Hop version was just a little more bite (in a bad way) than....

#4 Full Sail Lupulin Ale - Cascade Hops - The only difference here was the use of Cascade Hops as the Fresh Hop. What Freebird and I were able to distinguish is that we both prefer Cascade Hops over Crystal.

#3 Hopworks Fest of Fury - This was Freebird's Fav as the marzten style brought some sweetness to balance the spice of their Fresh Willamette Hops. For me, too sweet...still. Just not a big fan of martzens.

#2 Ninkasi Nugg-e Fresh - This was the lightest, in color, and mouth feel (if I'm using that term correctly) and I was shocked at how well balanced the beer was. Freebird thought that it bordered on Bitter Beer Face, but I found it quite quaffable! Nugget Hops.

#1 Oakshire Cascade Conundrum - The darkest beer was again my favorite of the bunch - shocker! Also a shocker is that the Conundrum used Cascade Hops in the "Freshening"...there can be only one hop!

Hopefully you can get down to the Harborside/Pilsner room while this mini-hopfest is still available!

Prost to the Pilsner Room Hopfest 2009 Sampler!

Thursday HairM

@ HairM with a cold Widmer Okto draft. Tomorrow is Friday. Time to take the bullets outta that gun.

I will survive until the weekend.
Prost to HairM and Okto!

What's in the Kegerator Now?

Beer Luvvas,

Freebird's parents are in town and we blew our keg of Hop Ottin on Friday night. It took us almost 3 weeks to blow through 5.15 gallons of hoppy goodness. So what's a guy to do? Put the empty keg in the car and head to John's Marketplace in Multnomah Village to swap it out!

The disadvantage is that we didn't order a keg in advance, so we were limited to what they had on hand....luckily they had a lot on hand!

We selected a 5.15 gallon keg of Widmer Broken Halo! More hops! More hops!

Prost to John's Marketplace! Prost to beer on tap in your own kitchen!